Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Sitting at my ‘desk’ waiting for the sun to turn the glass in front of my desk back into glass, rather than blackboard and chalk. Six Sentence Story warm-up day is what it is and I figured I’d interrupt my solitaire-as-meditation session and mess of the plain white space of a blank post.
So rumour has it that zoe (the host of this here bloghop here) has given us the word ‘DRESS’ as this week’s prompt word. (For new Readers and participants to be) the idea is to write a story employing the prompt word and, just before hitting ‘Publish’ be able to count six periods. No more and no less. (As implied, the goal is six sentences. Whether you’re going the James Joyce ‘do-you-see-anything-in-my-head,-real-or-imagined-that-suggests-that-I-am-thinking-in-simple-noun-verb-object-constructs-if-so-please-point-it-out’ style or the more familiar Hemingway ‘I can do that. Six sentence, right? Sure thing.’ The fun is in the process (and so is the devil and for some reason, God.)
DRESS
“Do you like my dress, Mr. Devereaux?”
Simone Sans, the newest dancer at Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge stood half a menu away from my right forearm, the reflective fabric of her dress tried to be a mirror and failed quite enjoyably.
I sat at my usual booth, ashtray and ‘silver’ware standing guard on my drink, the tabletop, all ring-stains and cigarette burns had been shellacked so many times it looked like petrified wood. I smiled at the twenty-going-on-lost girl, “Sure, I like it, but I thought you were in the business of being non-dressed?”
She laughed and hip-bumped my arm, the playful gesture an unstated compliment; in her line of work, physical contact with the patrons was as un-professional as a neurosurgeon bringing a meatball grinder into the operating room, nothing in the rule books says you can’t, but it wouldn’t be wise.
Simone took a half-step back, did a pirouette ending in a curtsy which caused the hem of her dress to rise upwards, the hint of pleasure as subtle as neon on a bar sign.
About clarkscottroger
My uncle had an old bureau he used as a dresser and shave stand. He’d lay his cigarette down and there were burns all along the edge.
Thanks, this made me think of Uncle Chuck and what a cool guy he was. Good six.
thanks Paul…. those cigarette burns… surely one more artifact of the past to disappear, no?
You’ve set this scene perfectly.
Thanks Mimi. Hey! there’s something wrong with your link at zoe’s you should check it
Ooh, la, la. And tell me Clark, were you just there for the wings?
wellll, (let me bring you up to speed… remember back, a year or two in the Sixes I wrote about a girl with blonde hair, Starr was her name…. well naturally that made me think, ‘damn I should try to write a first person detective novel…. ala Spenser, Jack Reacher, Philip Marlowe …. ‘the Search for the Missing Starr’ In any event, in my scottian secondary aspect sorta way, every now and then I pull a scene from the WIP and make a Six out of it. (Very instructive and useful especially with this particular genre)… If you go back in the Doctrine, anytime you see Bogart (or Bogart ad Bacall) that’s a Missing Diamond Six! (what Deborah Lee is referring to…)
ya know?
The character? Ian Devereaux
I saw the picture and thought, yay! More of Clark’s noir! “Twenty-going-on-lost” — awesome! I can see the scene in my mind. Great, as always.
thankee Miz, Lee
I really like this scene. In fact, I like it so much I’d suggest you use it when you start shopping the book around!
You captured the atmosphere nicely. Your main character is…a character :)
btw, ditto what Deborah Lee said “twenty…” Nice.
Well done. If I ever see a neurosurgeon in an operating room, I don’t want to remember that line you wrote. :-) I’ve seen some table tops in old restaurants that had that look of being shellacked umpteen times.
lol (neither would I!) they do have a certain ‘depth’ to them, don’t they?
You wrote some treasures from the Bottom of the Sea. Nice noir.
thank you Miz Avery…
Holy cow, that’s a good story! “Twenty going on lost”? Brilliant! You won the internet with this one.
Thanks D! The scene/story was fun.